Ł ł
«ł» is a consonant of the Polish script, read as “w (as in "wet")”. Sounds like English w: mały is "MAH-wih". For example, in the word “pociąg” — train. The Polish alphabet has 32 letters in total. A former hard l that slid into w. Past-tense verbs end in it: zrobił comes out "ZROH-beew". It appears, for example, in the word “miło mi” — nice to meet you.
In short
| Character | Ł ł |
| Sound | w (as in "wet") |
| What it is | a consonant |
In our course the character comes 16th of 32, its neighbours in the course are l and m, appears in 516 words of this site.
How to type Ł ł
- On a phone: add the Polish keyboard in the keyboard settings (Gboard on Android; Keyboards in the iPhone settings).
- In Word on Windows: type U+0142 and press Alt+X right after it — the code turns into the character.
- On a Mac: switch to the Unicode Hex Input source, hold Option and type 0142.
- Unicode code points: ł — U+0142, Ł — U+0141. With them, the characters can be found in the character map of any system.
How it sounds
Sounds like English w: mały is "MAH-wih"
The character in a word
A lone character is hard to remember: memory holds on to meaning, and a letter has none. The word it stands in provides that anchor.
- pociągtrain
The character in the “polish tails and strokes” group
Nine signs: two nasals (ą, ę), three soft ones (ć, ś, ź — with ń), ó, ł, and their dots and tails. A tail marks a nasal sound, a stroke marks softness, a dot is history.
Words with this character
How to remember this character
A single letter is the hardest thing to remember: memory has nothing to hold on to — a character has no meaning. A three-step loop works: see the character, try to recall the sound (for «ł» it is “w (as in "wet")”, as in the word “pociąg”), see the right answer.
And come back to it the next day, not in an hour: a check a day or two later beats a check the same day. Nobody holds the whole alphabet — 32 letters — at once.
- It is better to test yourself the next day than at the end of the same session. That is why a word comes back to you tomorrow.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · g = 0.82 when tested a day or two later, against 0.56 on the same day.
- Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many timesDonovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
Frequently asked
How does the Polish character ł read?
As “w (as in "wet")” — it is a consonant of the Polish script. Sounds like English w: mały is "MAH-wih". For example, in the word “pociąg” — train.